Nottingham 4.45 tips – Avenue looks the best route to profit

Plenty of racing action on a far from quiet Tuesday including day one of the Punchestown Festival, where Yorkhill and Vautour look banker bets – albeit at odds-on.

We can watch them win at such prohibitive odds (4/7 & 2/5 respectively) and look elsewhere for something to back at a working man’s price. Let’s try Nottingham. It’s a track I like as it’s wide, galloping and doesn’t throw up too many hard luck stories, so the form tends to work out – well, that’s the theory.

Jane Chapple-Hyam’s AVENUE DES CHAMPS is certainly the form horse in the 1m6f handicap (due off 4.45pm) as he has won his last two starts on the all-weather in grand style – the latest by nearly four lengths from a decent sort over slightly shorter – and now returns to turf, on which he has won previously, off what looks a fair mark of 66, with regular pilot Danny Brock taking 3lb off his back.

He wouldn’t want the ground too firm as he got jarred up on such a surface at Newmarket last July, hence his switch to an artificial surface, but today’s ‘good’ should be absolutely fine for him. This sort of trip clearly suits him too and he so has a fitness advantage over the vast majority of his rivals, all of whom have to give him weight. He can go in again.